“America faces large challenges, but the two political parties in Washington are not working together to find solutions. Most voters — Democrats, Independents, and Republicans — feel unrepresented by both extremes. We need new leadership, and it begins with you.

In June 2012, Americans Elect will invite you and every registered voter in the country to choose a third ticket for President and Vice President through an online convention. This ticket will bridge the vital center of public opinion and will be on the November 2012 ballot in all 50 states.”

“There is nothing which I dread so much as a division of the republic into two great parties … in opposition to each other.” – John Adams, Founding Father

It bears repeating that Americans Elect is gathering signatures right now, as we speak, to put its own unnamed presidential candidates on the ballot in the states of California and Michigan. It has already gained ballot access for the presidential election in Nevada. It has done this without offering anything on its web page from which it can be evaluated beyond these quotes and the claim that “the two political parties in Washington are not working together to find solutions.” It’s reasonable to question whether anyone should be signing a petition with only this much information available, and it’s also reasonable to ask why Americans Elect has chosen this course of action (although, unfortunately, Americans Elect is not answering questions). But at the very least, a person considering signing an Americans Elect petition ought to consider whether its limited factual claims are in fact true.

Are the two political parties in Washington in fact not working together to find solutions?

Do the parties just shout and not listen to one another?

Are the two great parties necessarily acting in opposition to each other?

Is the center in fact completely unrepresented in Washington, DC?

Are there current efforts to bridge the center from both sides of the ideological divide?

Are politicians being punished for engaging in such efforts?

Americans Elect does not answer such questions with reference to any observable facts at all, so we’ll need to answer those questions ourselves. As I demonstrated last week, it turns out that in the U.S. Congress the vast majority of the 258 voluntary organizations called “caucuses” set up to address policy concerns are already bipartisan in their leadership:

There are 200 organizations within the U.S. Congress alone already bridging the partisan divide between Republicans and Democrats. Thomas Friedman’s claim notwithstanding, I can find no evidence that members of Congress have been punished for their bipartisan activities in these organizations (“hyperpartisanship” being the theme of Friedman’s column).

Americans Elect isn’t Just Talking About Parties. What About the Ideological Divide?
Read Americans Elect’s brief appeal carefully and you’ll notice that it isn’t merely talking about political parties. The group is also talking about ideology, promoting a claim that political efforts ought to “bridge the vital center of public opinion.” Americans Elect promotes itself as the vehicle for bridging that vital center, but before Americans hop into that vehicle we ought to ask ourselves whether the image of “bridging a vital center” is appropriate. First, in order for Americans Elect to “bridge the vital center,” there needs to be a space to be bridged, a chasm separating the two sides of the center. Second, if there is a chasm in the center of American politics, then we only need Americans Elect to build a bridge connecting the two sides if there aren’t existing bridges.

Let’s return to the Congress and look at these two conditions to evaluate whether they’ve been met.

Is there a chasm in the center of politics?

At our sister site, That’s My Congress, we maintain an index of liberal and conservative congressional action in voting and bill cosponsorship by members of the House. If we take the percentage of possible liberal actions actually taken by a member of Congress (ranging from 0 to 100), and subtract the percentage of possible conservative actions actually taken by that same member of Congress (again ranging from 0 to 100), the result is an index in which a score of -100 indicates a perfectly conservative record and a score of +100 indicates a perfectly liberal record.

A tally of ideological scores for the 435 members of the House of Representatives, current as of April 7 2011, shows that there isn’t so much of a chasm in the center of the ideological spectrum of Congress as there is a slight divot. There are actually more members of Congress who inhabit the center of the ideological spectrum (97 Representatives between -30 to +30) than members who occupy the ideological extremes (45 Representatives with a score of -70 to -100 and 27 Representatives with a score of +70 to +100).

Despite what David Brooks might say, there are plenty of people inhabiting the ideological center of Congress right now. When nearly a quarter of the Congress adopts a centrist profile in action, it’s unclear why some new form of a bridge to connect left and right is necessary.

Are there already bridges connecting the two sides?

If we adopt the perspective of Americans Elect and consider liberals and conservatives to be on two sides, are there already bridges connecting the two? Are members of Congress already working together despite being ideologically distant from one another?

Yes.

Above is a tally of the 225 congressional caucuses registered with the Committee on House Administration that have more than one member of Congress listed as a leader. The “ideological span” for each caucus is the amount of difference between caucus leaders along that -100 to +100 ideological index I mentioned above. The greatest possible ideological span would be 182, since the most conservative-scoring Representatives are Doug Lamborn and John Kline with scores of -87, and the most liberal-scoring Representative is Rush Holt at +95. The greatest actual ideological span among congressional caucuses comes surprisingly close, with the Biomedical Research Caucus being led by Rep. Holt, Rep. Jackie Speier (ideological score of +80), and Rep. Brian Bilbray (ideological score of -74).

The Congressional Caucuses with an ideological span of 140 points or more are:

Each one of these caucuses features cooperation between a staunch conservative and a committed liberal who have nevertheless found some common ground and are working together to build understanding and craft policy. Each one of these partnerships is a bridge of the sort that Americans Elect says our political system needs. There are a lot of these bridges, stretching a long way: 79 congressional caucuses are led by members of Congress with an ideological difference of 100 points or more, and the average ideological span of a caucus is 82 points.

Conclusion
In order to carve a niche for itself, Americans Elect portrays our national politics as plagued by an unbridged partisan and ideological divide that only it can cross with a presidential ticket that it will devise. But a close look at congressional caucuses shows that they are led by members who are already working together despite partisan and ideological differences. 200 caucuses bridge the partisan divide, and 79 caucuses bridge an ideological gap of 100 points or more.

Surely there are different partisan and ideological approaches to the substance and process of policymaking; the promotion of different ideas is what legislative politics is all about, after all. But for better or worse, the extent of division in American politics appears to be overstated by Americans Elect, at least as it applies to organization-building within the Congress. As far as I can determine, bipartisan and cross-ideology organization-building has gone unpunished by congressional leaders, although if you can document any effort to punish these members of the House for working with their ideological opposites on issues of the day, I encourage you to share such documentation here.

Before we sign petitions to put Americans Elect on the ballot, we ought to ask Americans Elect to explain itself and its claims with more detail and clarity than it has managed to date. There is certainly a place for a third party in America, but inaccurate claims about partisan and ideological warfare don’t make a sturdy foundation for building one.

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About the authorJim Cook

I haven't been everywhere, but I've lived lots of places in the USA: the North, the South, the East, the West, and places in between. Every place I've been, I've seen acts large and small of kindness, callousness and disregard. Here we are. What will we do?

I don’t care how many studies or surveys you can produce to demonstrate the lack of an ideological chasm, the fact is the two parties dictate how the members of congress and the senate vote. The individual members may have centralist ideology but they certainly vote along party ideology and that produces a wide divide. You only need to look at the shameless behavior of my own party in California, the Republican members of our state government are holding our budget hostage, unwilling to negotiation, talk or compromise at all. Maybe it is time to look at a new solution, the two parties we have are not solving any problems, they are simply causing them. I would like to see what this new group is about and am unwilling to condemn them before I know enough to make an informed decision.

It is a time of fear in the face of freedom, a time of an emptying country and swelling cities, a time for the widening of previous roads and the opening of new paths, yet a time when these paths are mined by knowing algorithms of the all-seeing eye. It is the time of the warrior's peace and the miser's charity, when the planting of a seed is an act of conscientious objection. These are the times when maps fade, old landmarks crumble and direction is lost. Forwards is backwards now, so we glance sideways at the strange lands through which we are all passing, knowing for certain only that our destination has disappeared. We are unready to meet these times, but we proceed nonetheless, adapting as we wander, reshaping the Earth with every tread. Behind us we have left the old times, the standard times, the high times. Welcome to the irregular times.